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I'm not sure where you got this idea. Ad-blocking might hurt in some future with hypothetically high enough percentages of traffic. Right now they make ads mo

I'm not sure where you got this idea. Ad-blocking might hurt in some future with hypothetically high enough percentages of traffic. Right now they make ads more effective (marginally). By self selection, a population with relatively low click-rates has removed themselves from having any money spent on them. This helps Google and Advertisers since right now, the volume of available impressions is plenty high, the name of the game is targeting better. If anything, ad blockers just hurt select publishers who can potentially see a large volume of their potential ad traffic blocked.

lonelappde 7y ago
Advertisers converge toward pay per conversion on average, so removing non-converting traffic doesn't affect spend or payouts.
- Retric 7y ago
  It’s unlike that add blockers are exclusively used by people who are completely unaffected by advertising.
danShumway 7y ago
This sounds completely reasonable to me, and I don't know where it's wrong, but it doesn't square with my experience and I think it's wrong. If this were true, nobody would be getting mad about ad blockers. But both advertisers and publishers (big and small) regularly complain about ad blockers, and even with a relatively small portion of users installing a blocker, multiple journalism sites have started adding paywalls. This paranoia isn't restricted to small sites either -- Google's even listed ad blockers as a potential revenue problem in investor disclosures. A couple of potential causes: maybe it's that impressions actually do matter to revenue in some cases and we haven't completely moved over to conversions yet, or maybe it's that advertising increases consumer spending even without direct conversion rates, or that most publishers are engaged in fraud and ad-blockers make it harder to do that. It might even just be that publishers/advertisers are all stupid and haven't realized that ad blockers don't matter, but I think that's unlikely. What seems plausible to me is that most of the people who block ads are not as immune to advertising as they claim. If they didn't block ads, they would occasionally click on an ad and provide a conversion. I would not be surprised to see that exposure to advertising increased overall spending, and didn't just redirect it to specific companies. I could be wrong though, maybe it's something else. I'd be interested to see research on that kind of thing. Regardless, it is very difficult for me to square the world you describe with a world where a huge fraction of news sites I visit are including banners that tell people to whitelist ads, or anti-adblocking technology outright, or are just giving up and switching to subscription models. I can't think of an explanation for that other than, "ad blockers decrease revenue", and I think that having an explanation for that behavior is a prerequisite to making a believable claim that ad blockers aren't hurting revenue right now. I mean, Google's not dumb. They would not have wasted time on the acceptable ads initiative if they didn't feel like they needed to.
- kjeetgill 7y ago
  Publishers definitely get hurt hardest because volume and quality of traffic is more important for them, less so for exchanges. They're the ones who are the "huge fraction of news sites [you] visit [that are] including banners that tell people to whitelist ads, or anti-adblocking technology outright". > maybe it's that impressions actually do matter to revenue in some cases and we haven't completely moved over to conversions yet, or maybe it's that advertising increases consumer spending even without direct conversion rates, I mean you're right. Branding campaign spend just wants to eat up impressions and don't care much for click or actions. They're a large amount of $$ spent, but they also benefit the least from tracking so they can basically be shown to anyone. Tons of available inventory for them. But there's tons of money in more targeted CPA, CPC ads too. Disclaimer: I mostly knew things from the RTB angle maybe 3 years ago. I may be out of date with where things are at.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  I always thought that the big problem for advertisers was who blocks ads. Adwords stopped being effective for me years ago, looking back I assume that's because I sell to a technical audience who are most likely to run adblockers. I wonder if that applies to income as well, are people with higher purchasing power more likely to block ads. My gut feeling is yes.

lonelappde 7y ago

Advertisers converge toward pay per conversion on average, so removing non-converting traffic doesn't affect spend or payouts.

Retric 7y ago
It’s unlike that add blockers are exclusively used by people who are completely unaffected by advertising.

danShumway 7y ago

This sounds completely reasonable to me, and I don't know where it's wrong, but it doesn't square with my experience and I think it's wrong. If this were true, nobody would be getting mad about ad blockers. But both advertisers and publishers (big and small) regularly complain about ad blockers, and even with a relatively small portion of users installing a blocker, multiple journalism sites have started adding paywalls. This paranoia isn't restricted to small sites either -- Google's even listed ad blockers as a potential revenue problem in investor disclosures. A couple of potential causes: maybe it's that impressions actually do matter to revenue in some cases and we haven't completely moved over to conversions yet, or maybe it's that advertising increases consumer spending even without direct conversion rates, or that most publishers are engaged in fraud and ad-blockers make it harder to do that. It might even just be that publishers/advertisers are all stupid and haven't realized that ad blockers don't matter, but I think that's unlikely. What seems plausible to me is that most of the people who block ads are not as immune to advertising as they claim. If they didn't block ads, they would occasionally click on an ad and provide a conversion. I would not be surprised to see that exposure to advertising increased overall spending, and didn't just redirect it to specific companies. I could be wrong though, maybe it's something else. I'd be interested to see research on that kind of thing. Regardless, it is very difficult for me to square the world you describe with a world where a huge fraction of news sites I visit are including banners that tell people to whitelist ads, or anti-adblocking technology outright, or are just giving up and switching to subscription models. I can't think of an explanation for that other than, "ad blockers decrease revenue", and I think that having an explanation for that behavior is a prerequisite to making a believable claim that ad blockers aren't hurting revenue right now. I mean, Google's not dumb. They would not have wasted time on the acceptable ads initiative if they didn't feel like they needed to.

kjeetgill 7y ago
Publishers definitely get hurt hardest because volume and quality of traffic is more important for them, less so for exchanges. They're the ones who are the "huge fraction of news sites [you] visit [that are] including banners that tell people to whitelist ads, or anti-adblocking technology outright". > maybe it's that impressions actually do matter to revenue in some cases and we haven't completely moved over to conversions yet, or maybe it's that advertising increases consumer spending even without direct conversion rates, I mean you're right. Branding campaign spend just wants to eat up impressions and don't care much for click or actions. They're a large amount of $$ spent, but they also benefit the least from tracking so they can basically be shown to anyone. Tons of available inventory for them. But there's tons of money in more targeted CPA, CPC ads too. Disclaimer: I mostly knew things from the RTB angle maybe 3 years ago. I may be out of date with where things are at.
tonyedgecombe 7y ago
I always thought that the big problem for advertisers was who blocks ads. Adwords stopped being effective for me years ago, looking back I assume that's because I sell to a technical audience who are most likely to run adblockers. I wonder if that applies to income as well, are people with higher purchasing power more likely to block ads. My gut feeling is yes.